Is public service working for MPs or the public?

Opinion - Public service failures in the recent
news have raised serious questions of competence and
oversight.

Housing New Zealand's meth testing caused
mayhem and misery for a large number of tenants. Photo: Katy
Gosset/RNZ

Housing New Zealand (HNZ) accepted
junk "science" to needlessly cause mayhem and cost to a
large number of tenants and landlords and taxpayers through
evictions and cleanups. Prime
ministerial chief science adviser Peter Gluckman's report was
trenchant.

New information was
obtained by RNZ on the failure by the Transport Agency (NZTA)
in 2016 to ensure independent testing of what turned out to
be dangerously defective steel from China destined for
Waikato expressway structures.

Add retired Employment
Court Judge Coral Shaw's grim report in May on the dysfunctional
culture in the Human Rights Commission (HRC), including
tension between commissioners and between them and staff and
a "chronic" lack of resources. The HRC is the official
monitor of how well the citizens treat each other.

Before Parliament
is a bill from Mr Hipkins tightening controls on the
sprawling range of Crown entities - including HNZ, NZTA, the
HRC and EQC - that operate under boards appointed by
ministers, with varying degrees of autonomy. Hughes will
sign off future chief executive salaries and conditions and
apply the public service code of conduct to Crown entity
boards and board members.

The SSC is now cleaning up the
HRC. But where was the SSC in the meth, NAIT and steel
fiascos? Do these reflect wider management deficits?

For
example, was HNZ too keen to serve ministers' wishes to be
seen as tough on drugs?

There is a widely held view,
including among public servants, that officials in the past
two decades have focused too tightly on serving ministers,
even at times anticipating and then serving up what their
ministers might want to hear. Mr Hipkins sums it up as them
asking ministers: "What advice would you like?"

Critics
say there is a wider duty: to keep in mind, and thus serve,
the public's broad and future interests and needs.

A low
point was the leaking of deputy Prime Minister Winston
Peters' superannuation overpayments details last year, which
has led to a $400,000 lawsuit. Another was Treasury
acquiescence in then-Finance Minister Steven Joyce's apparent electioneering at the release
of the supposedly independent pre-election economic and
fiscal update.

This attitude spilled into deference to
ministers or, worse, the party-political advisers in their
offices, over Official Information Act requests.

Mr
Hipkins wants proactive release of cabinet advice, though
one or two of his ministerial colleagues have not quite kept
up.

Officials operate under the State Services Act which
implies their role is to serve the state: that is,
ministers. The last big reform in 1988 tightened that
through contracts chief executives signed with
ministers.

The SSC is drafting replacement legislation, a
Public Service Act (perhaps - though unlikely - with three
commissioners, not one as now). This will aim to restate the
wider public interest and lay out a set of principles and
purposes. Mr Hughes and Mr Hipkins both talk of
"stewardship".

In a speech in March, Hughes said when he
talks about "public service and the spirit of service", that
"gets a hugely positive response as if I am articulating
something that everyone believes in but no one talks about
any more".

One reason is that the public service is
"sliced very thinly" - as Hipkins (who wants a "career
public service") puts it - into "silos", multiple separate
agencies, each with managerial independence and separate
staffs.

For two decades, public servants have agonised
over how to break down those silo walls and widen their
focus from narrow "outputs" contracted with the minister and
from Sir Bill English's narrow "targets" for "better public
services" to complex "outcomes" requiring flexible, seamless
working across portfolio boundaries.

Another big challenge
is managing teeming data in the digital age to enable
outcome-focused decisions and actions without compromising
privacy.

A third, related to those two, is smart use of
science advisers. The energetic, enterprising Sir Peter
appointed academic experts part-time to some key
departments. That, coupled with Treasury insistence that
those experts sign off on major new programmes, has helped
sharpen some thinking.

Ideology is easier than science.
Ministers' ideology gave us charter schools and now their
closure. Pressure groups, too, can bend ministers (and
officials) away from science.

So, will the new Public
Service Act give us "better public services"? Or will there
still be the likes of meth scares, NAIT laxity and dud
steel?

* Colin James is a political journalist with 45
years experience. He is a senior fellow of the Institute for
Governance and Policy Studies.

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